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Democratic Coalition ideas

I think the Democratic Coalition should be branded as such. There is a lot of good will for the Democrats and Obama in the States even on this side of the border. So the Democratic brand is something that the Coalition people should latch on to in order to make the idea of a Democratic Coalition permanent and a concept of unite the (centre) left against the united Right.

With the squelching of Bob Rae and the rising of Michael Ignatieff, the 'Unite the Left' has lost a round. However the Unite the Right lost many rounds (CCRAP, DORC, Joe Clark, etc) before it got it right. It may take the Liberals a couple of elections to realize that they cannot obtain power unless they are in a coalition with someone else. I think it will take more than Iggy's waxing eloquent on the sweet smell of manure in Richmond Quebec to get the Liberals a bounce in the rural areas, especially as it is becoming clearer that the best way to oppose Tories in rural areas is to vote NDP, as they have known in Western Canada for some generations, and as they have just learned in Ontario.

Perhaps a Democratic organization could be set up which organized primary elections for MP candidates and for Leader of the Democratic Coalition. In each riding a Democratic Club has organized a Primary (which it has allowed all registered Democrats to vote in without charge), where the Liberal Democrat, the New Democrat, and possibly the Green Democrat have run for the Democratic imprimatur. Consitituent parties of the Democratic Club would then agree not to run candidates against the winner, the winner being the peoples' choice. This would prevent vote-splitting, and eliminate the need for strategic voting on the Left.

Democratically-minded Conservatives would probably want the same thing, and the Conservatives and Democrats could have their primaries in the same place and at the same time so that people could vote on one slate or the other, probably even both. At that point, Elections Canada could organize it.

There are many ways to this goal. The New Democrats could rebrand themselves to the Democrats, and allow the primary process to include Liberal Democrats and Green Democrats. Although the people at large would select the candidates, Party members would still set policy and be involved with organization. As the Alliance was the ideological party which instigated the merger on the right, it makes sense that the NDP is the ideological party which should instigate the merger on the left.

There will likely be many false starts before this project is complete, however there are many on both sides who would like to see a return to a 2-party system, which our parliament was designed for. With 2 parties, a majority generally means a majority, rural gerrymandering notwithstanding.

"With the squelching of Bob Rae and the rising of Michael Ignatieff, the 'Unite the Left' has lost a round."

Actually the coalition GAINED a round from this. If Bob Rae had become Liberal leader it would have promptly set the cause of any cooperation whatsoever between the NDP and the Liberals back by about 20 years. Everyone in the NDP loathes Rae so much (and the feeling is quite mutual) that the coalition would have fallen apart very quickly - the personal chemistry would have been too toxic. On top of that a former NDP premier would never have had the credibility WITHIN the Liberal party to sell the idea there either.

I would have thought an ex-NDPer would be just the right person to bring the Liberals and the NDP together.

I also think that Bob Rae would have done a lot better in the leadership contest than was being predicted. It is true that some NDPers in Ontario may not like Bob Rae, but I don't think that's necessarily true outside Ontario. Indeed the fact Bob Rae is not well-liked in Ontario is a positive outside Ontario...

Before Bob passed the baton to Michael, he was by far the most vociferous Liberal for the Democratic Coalition. Unfortunately for the Democratic Coalition, that flame has been doused. Now the Liberals are making peace with the Conservatives (read Scotty Bryson today for example), I think it is fair to say the Democratic Coalition has lost a round.

Personally, I think the Democratic Coalition should take up a life of its own as one of the permutations necessary in the formation of a united centre-left in Canada.

I think that on the contrary - if there was ever going to be any move towards closer cooperation between the NDP and Liberals it could only ever happen when both parties are led by people who have no toxic personal emotions that get in the way. Bob Rae has morphed with a convert's zeal into being the Liberal attack dog against the NDP. He literally spent the whole recent election campaign writing fundraising e-mails for the Liberals that consisted of little more than some really vicious nasty personal ad hominem attacks on Jack Layton - plus touring ridings that were tight NDP/Tory battles where the Liberals had no chance where he would urge people to vote Liberal anyways (I guess in Bob Rae's mind - better that a riding should go Tory than NDP).

If the NDP and Liberals are going to work together, there has to be some level of trust and understanding between the leading figures in each party. None of that exists with Bob Rae who would only go through the motions of wanting a coalition when his real aim is to eliminate the NDP and force people to be Benedict Arnolds like he was. With a toxic person like him in the mix - the Tories would happily play the NDP and Liberals off against each other and stay in power for a generation.

I would have thought an ex-NDPer would be just the right person to bring the Liberals and the NDP together.

Remember the saying "Only Nixon could go to China"? Maybe only Iggy can go to Jack.

Actually, I think it's more likely he'll use the coalition as an empty threat, but if Harper can't resist his worst impulses again then he may have no alternative but to use it. I believe Stockholm's absolutely right about Rae. He'd have no credibility on either side to carry this out.

Do you really think the Igg man wants to carry on from where Dion left off kow-towing to Harper before the election? Voters rewarded the Liberals with their lowest level of support in decades. Would Liberals sooner sacrifice power now for a vague promise of glory four years from now? Odds against correctly predicting future events next week are remote let alone four years on. I think the Igg man might not consider himself just a placeholder to a future dynastic Liberal leader once or twice removed. I think, for what it's worth, that even the Liberals realize now that phony majorities are no longer a sure thing for them. Liberals may be realizing that if they want to avoid fading into political obscurity in Canada as they have in Europe over time, they have to act now. As the very conservative Nicolas Sarkozy said recently, le lazy-faire, c'est fini.

Okay, Will Smith, you've made a fair point. But will the Harpers make anything work well? I think good times are not in store for Canada's economy for several years, if the koalition of kross-bred konservative kousins have anything to do with things. And before the perogie fest, these conservatives werent in tune with even G7 political conservatives wrt "stimulus" to cushion the love and p waves from this currently onrushing global economic quake radiating from an epicentre right next door to the Northern Puerto Rico.

Will things "work" any worse than they would under an Iggy-led Koalition? I doubt it. There's not much governments can do to "fix" the economic quake besides throw a lot of money at their corporate friends.

Will things "work" any worse than they would under an Iggy-led Koalition? I doubt it. There's not much governments can do to "fix" the economic quake besides throw a lot of money at their corporate friends.

It's capitalism and we're stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

You're prolly right. Konservatives in other countries are talking about real stimulus, somewhere between one and two percent of GDP. And John (I confused major WWI events with WWII as minister of defence) McCallum already sounds like Herbert Hoover on that front. It might even be better for the NDP to heckle from the sidelines while the two old line parties await further instruction on their second-hand ideology from Warshington and Bay Street financial genuses .

I believe people misunderstand what the Accord on a Cooperative Government to Address the Present Economic Crisis between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party to form a Coalition government, with Bloc Québécois support, actually means for Canada, and for Canadians.

The Liberal-NDP Coalition is simply an agreement to work together; to cooperate with each other for the good of Canada, and for the good of Canadians.

This is what the Liberal, the New Democratic Party, and the Bloc Québécois have done by signing the accord to form a Liberal-NDP Coalition government, with Bloc Québécois support.

The Liberal-NDP Coalition does not mean that they have given up their individual party ideals.

The Liberal-NDP Coalition does not mean that they have betrayed the people who have voted for them.

The Liberal-NDP Coalition means that they have decided to work together in parliament for the people who voted for them.

In order for the Liberal-NDP Coalition to work, the Bloc Québécois have pledged their support for matters of Confidence.

The Bloc Québécois have no veto powers - this is misinformation and it is misleading to Canadians.

The Bloc Québécois MPs were duly elected to represent the Canadians whom elected them to the House of Commons.

The Bloc Québécois have said that they will work together with the Liberals and the NDP, and support them on matters of Confidence for a minimum of 18 months.

The Liberal-NDP Coalition is a good thing for the majority of Canadians who did not vote for the Conservatives, who voted for anything but Conservative!

I look forward now to January 26th, and I support a Liberal-NDP Coalition, should the Budget in January be lacking for Canada and for Canadians.

:) SCC

P.S. Copies of the Accord on a Cooperative Government to Address the Present Economic Crisis found here:

I look forward now to January 26th, and I support a Liberal-NDP Coalition, should the Budget in January be lacking for Canada and for Canadians.

Have no fear. Your beloved party leader, Michael Ignatieff will support the budget and enter into a de facto coalition with the Conservatives, just as your former beloved party leader, Stephane Dion did in the last parliament.

Ignatieff wants nothing to do with it. Layton is feeling cheated, because he came oh so close, and the separatists are just going to keep banging the drum about how unfair the whole thing is to Quebec.

In the end, the Conservatives, though chastened somewhat, will get to continue doing whatever they want, while the Libs are going to continue having to grumble a bit each time before sucking it up.

In fact, the whole crisis has even given Harper the excuse to fill all those Senate seats as well as a few appointments to the senior public service.

Some people in western Canada reacted against the Coalition as though it was an attack on the West and would be dominated by Ontario and Quebec.

In fact there is no reason for the West to have fewer cabinet members in the Coalition government than they have today.

Currently the cabinet (which does not include Ministers of State) has 26 members besides Stephen Harper: nine from the west, nine from Ontario, four from Quebec, three from Atlantic Canada, one from the North.

The Coalition cabinet is to have 24 ministers plus the Prime Minister. Eighteen of these ministers will be from the Liberal caucus. Six of these ministers will be from the NDP caucus. "In the event the Prime Minister chooses to appoint a larger cabinet, the NDP proportion will be maintained."

I think they are going to dispense with Ministers of State, and have a larger cabinet but a smaller ministry: 29 ministers, rather than Harper’s 38. From the West nine, Ontario nine, Quebec seven, Atlantic four.

From the West six Liberals:

Ralph Goodale (Saskatchewan)

Ujjal Dosanjh (BC)

Joyce Murray (BC)

Sukh Dhaliwal or Hedy Fry (BC)

Senator Claudette Tardif (Alberta)

Anita Neville (Manitoba)

Three New Democrats:

Libby Davies (BC)

Linda Duncan (Alberta)

Judy Wasylicia-Leis (Manitoba)

They are going to have a really hard time holding it down to nine in Ontario, counting Ignatieff and Layton:

The more new posters come on here saying that the coalition is "dead", Iggy hates it, the public doesn't like it and so on, the more I know it's a great idea for 2009. The fear of the moneyed and power class is papable. That fear is democracy and power in the hands of the many, and representation of working non-partisan and yet maintaining separate parties.

Actually incorporating the Bloc as supporters rather than that old style divide and conquer worked for those old time moneyed interests in both the libs and cons. It does not work for the majority of Canadians.

Coalition govt 2009 or bust!

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Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!

Ya, I think if the Igg man thinks he can get by on his looks, he's sadly mistaken. He knows the Liberal Party is at an all time low for having sided with Harper on 42 non-confidence votes leading up to the Harpers winning 22 percent of the registered vote. Iggy needs to shake things up not follow what Dion did for two years. Dion was never so popular as when siding with the coalition, and I think Iggy realizes it. What he does with it now is anybody's guess. I think Harper will be swimming upstream again in Ottawa soon, or whenever he decides to show up for work.

Unemployed Canadians and those worrying about job loss everywhere salute the Harpers, our newest men of leisure in Ottawa.

Whereas the Harper Conservatives pursue a pro-corporate, anti-women, pro-war and anti-worker agenda, and deserve to be defeated, and

Whereas the Federal Liberals have followed the same agenda by supporting Harper's corporate tax cuts, supporting the war in Afghanistan, opposing anti-scab legislation and instituting massive cuts when in government, and

Whereas maintaining an independent principled position on Afghanistan and corporate tax cuts enhanced NDP support in the 2008 Federal election, while abandoning these principled positions in a coalition has seen NDP support to drop to 12% in some polls, and

Whereas abandoning the NDP platform merely feeds into the disappointment of the 41% of non-voters who believe that all politicians are the same and will abandon their principles to gain power, and

Whereas Ignatieff's call for a "coalition if necessary, but not necessarily a coalition" uses the NDP as a bargaining chip, in a humiliating way, to gain pro-Liberal concessions from the Conservatives.

Therefore be it resolved that this body recommends that the Federal NDP parliamentary caucus vote no confidence in the Harper Conservatives but does not enter into any coalition with the Federal Liberals who uphold the same anti-worker, anti-women and pro-war policies.

In December 2008, the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party proposed to form a coalition, to replace the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper. The articles below, published in Intercontinental Press in 1974, review the disastrous results of a previous NDP-Liberal parliamentary alliance.

Sorry, M. Spector, these two articles recall the worst of the worst of the era, when leftists decided that the path to power lay in:

1. Adjectives and slogans (that's Warden's article); and

2. Eating each other alive (Fidler's article, in which he scorns and ridicules all the left groups that don't share his favourite acronyms).

Your posts and your analysis are light years ahead of the meaningless tripe that was being written in those bygone years. Please file it back in the dustbin where it belongs. It is time for workers to lead change, not to be berated for failing to use the right initials.

The reality is that the NDP would fare much better in a party merger than in a parliamentary deal of any kind. We would constitute a majority of the active members and a majority of the donors in such an arrangement. As the Liberals continue to fail financially and organizationally, we need to be ready with positive centre-left unity project that will confer much bigger dividends to New Democrats than the quarter of a federal cabinet that's not allowed to touch the money.

Your posts and your analysis are light years ahead of the meaningless tripe that was being written in those bygone years.

Your flattery is misplaced. The following passage from the first article accords exactly with my own analysis of the present Koalition:

Quote:

The NDP was founded in opposition to "Liberal-Labor" politics. The rank and file of the trade-union movement recognized that workers needed their own party, independent of the Liberals and Tories, to pursue labor's interests and fight for power. The NDP leaders cut across that aspiration for independent labor political action with their parliamentary alliance. In their support for the Liberals they reduced the NDP from a party striving for power on the federal and provincial levels, into little more than a pressure group groveling for crumbs from the Liberal's corporate table.

No parliamentary bloc with a capitalist party can serve working people's interests. The Liberals and Tories are agents of the corporations, as Lewis is saying in this election campaign. They are representatives of the capitalist ruling class, who own and run Canada's economy in the interest of maximum profits, for every ounce of sweat they can drain from working people, at the lowest possible wage.

"Pressure" from a group of NDP MPs will not change this.

The interests of big business and labor are fundamentally irreconcilable. Every penny of capitalist profit is robbed from the workers' pockets. Only uncompromising struggle against the capitalists and their parties can advance the position of working people.

Labor can have no truck or trade with the capitalist parties. No worker should vote for the capitalist parties at the ballot box; no representative of labor should lend them support in parliament. It is only through independent labor political action that workers can win real power.

As for the adjectives, slogans, and acronyms - those are not the point. These articles are a valuable historical record of what can happen when the NDP makes an unprincipled alliance with the Liberals. Ignore everything else if you must, but heed the words of David Lewis:

Quote:

You cannot condemn the government for some of the things that you feel you ought to condemn it for, in a way in which you'd like to do it,when you're refusing to vote it out of office...you cannot make the demands on the Trudeau government that you know he is not going to accept.

And the words of Pierre Trudeau:

Quote:

For 18 months the NDP prospered by loudly demanding things that the Liberal government was doing anyway.

Then contemplate the drubbing the NDP took in the subsequent election:

Quote:

...dropping from 31 to 16 seats, and its share of the total vote declined by 2.5 percent to 15 percent. NDP leader David Lewis lost his own seat to a little-known Liberal candidate. In British Columbia, a traditional stronghold of the NDP, it dropped from 11 seats to 2. Its representation was also reduced in the other two western provinces where it holds office, Saskatchewan and Manitoba....

The NDP was seriously compromised, moreover, by the fact that for the past twenty months - during which prices have shot upward with no response from the government - it has voted consistently with the Liberals in Ottawa to keep the Trudeau government in office. In fact, the NDP leaders were in the peculiar position during this election of favoring reelection of a Liberal government.

Much of their campaign was spent in boasting of "concessions" they claimed to have wheedled from the Liberals in return for their parliamentary collaboration. This tended to appear as praise for the accomplishments of the Liberals at the expense of the NDP. To many voters, it must have seemed that the NDP differed but little from the Liberal party.

According to the Toronto Star..... The Winners and Losers of the Coalition are....

Winners= Harper, Ignatieff

Losers= Dion, Rae

LongTerm Negative Effects= Layton, Duceppe.

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Shop talk in my region is similar to those thoughts. Which means the LPC could make gains by ignoring the coalition as a viable alternative. But use the NDP as leverage against the CPC, but never going down the coalition road.

Shop talk in my region is similar to those thoughts. Which means the
LPC could make gains by ignoring the coalition as a viable alternative.
But use the NDP as leverage against the CPC, but never going down
the coalition road.

The NDP are weak.

I agree that Ignatieff and the Liberals are looking strong for the first time in a long time but I think that will change rapidly if he props up Harper. A lot of the good will he and the Libs are getting right now is precisely because he appears to be standing up to Harper. If he goes the Dion route of talking shrill but supporting the Cons then that will just cement what a useless entity the Liberal Party is.

I just hope the NDP have bargained for enough if there is a coalition and are prepared to step it up against Iggy if there isn´t.

Here's who has won so far: the Canadian people. We're getting a stimulus package instead of an austerity package. I'm a New Democrat and I think that, when it comes to the day-to-day lives of working people over the next year, forcing Harper to comply with the G20 stimulus agenda was absolutely worth us losing 60% of our supporters in the West in the short term.

Well, in my area the coalition got positive support so your workplace madmax is your centre of universe but not mine. Personally, the positive spin of Iggy is the MSM cause liberal or tory, the elite class continues to rule and ensure that the stim package goes mainly to them, saves their greedy butts, and crumbs are given or ordinary folks. Look for IE rejig to take at least a year to happen, as Harper and Iggy "study it to death." By then, most folks IE will have run out and they will be off the radar screen and in the breadline. Tsk, tsk, and meanwhile, rapid response to investers, corp types and all other financial type businesses.

I wanted to scream and when I heard Iggy talking about investing in retraining - that is so boring and passe. Retrain for what - non exist jobs. Just busy work for collectors and a good gig for the job training facilitators. The winner is the guys who land the contracts. It's a hoax and is about making it look like something is happening as opposed to "making it happen."

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Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!

Well, in my area the coalition got positive support so your workplace madmax is your centre of universe but not mine.

In the other thread where it asked for reactions in your area regarding the coalition, I responded with the reaction in my area. You can post the reaction from your area in that thread. My workplace was pro coalition until Dion came to head it, and then there was outright anger regarding Senate talk for Elizabeth May and the issue jobs and economy dissapeared. However, outside my place of work, particularly once the CPC adds took effect the Coalition was receiving a negative response, and then it was compounded and the coffin was built with Dions Non Televised Debacle. Jack Layton and the NDP have a strong base in my region but the public was outraged and blame Jack for attempting to put "that goof" in power that they didn't want to see as Prime Minister.

Quote:

I wanted to scream and when I heard Iggy talking about investing in retraining - that is so boring and passe. Retrain for what - non exist jobs. Just busy work for collectors and a good gig for the job training facilitators. The winner is the guys who land the contracts. It's a hoax and is about making it look like something is happening as opposed to "making it happen."

I FULLY AGREE !!! I FULLY AGREE!!! I FULLY AGREE!!!

Politicians sell this bullshit because it is easy to sell and makes it look like they are doing something.

Many people in the General public, more importantly, those well paid in the PUBLIC SERVICE believe and advocate this bullshit.

It is difficult to present the truth when the myth sells better.

Same can be said for the coalition which blew it. And I do not see any party paying a higher price then the NDP for this association.

It was not a bright move for the LPC either, but they have recovered and inserted a new leader who is virtually a mirror of Stephen Harper.

They LPC will be able to sell the goodwill of the left once again, and govern from the right if the opportunity should ever arise again. However, the LPC have discarded the coalition and will be trying to posture themselves as the alternative to Harper.

It is typical LPC arrogance and if Harper puts Political Funding back on the table, the LPC with Ignatieff at the helm will come running back to the NDP to find their courage.

Retraining is not passe. The more education the more we adapt to the world as it is. The democratic coalition has a lot of support in my world.

Elizabeth May would make a great senator. I'm not a green voter but I think she is honest, out spoken, environmentally on the mark, and doesn't have a hidden agenda. Why wouldn't I like her better than some of those who were chosen. Her party got almost a million votes and no seat. If she was in the senate those people would have a voice. They are certainly not going to vote for the conservative demonizers and denegaters no matter how subtely they try to make their little points, and neither am I. Your subtelty doesn't work fellas. We can spot you every time.

Retraining is not passe. The more education the more we adapt to the world as it is. The democratic coalition has a lot of support in my world.

Elizabeth May would make a great senator. I'm not a green voter but I think she is honest, out spoken, environmentally on the mark, and doesn't have a hidden agenda. Why wouldn't I like her better than some of those who were chosen. Her party got almost a million votes and no seat. If she was in the senate those people would have a voice. They are certainly not going to vote for the conservative demonizers and denegaters no matter how subtely they try to make their little points, and neither am I. Your subtelty doesn't work fellas. We can spot you every time.

The public would have accepted a coalition. As one of Nixon's henchman used to say: "If you have the guts (b***s) to do something - hearts and minds will follow."

All this talk about the "public not liking" Rae or Dion or Layton or the Bloc or Harper or Mackay or anyone else is pure red herring baloney. The public thinks what the media tells them to think, as with time it can become accustomed to anything, including lies, backtracking, prevarications, corruption, and outright deception.

Think of Mulroney's air scandal, Harper's income trust fund reneging, the Liberals turnabout on NAFTA, blah blah blah blah blah. Nary a whimperfrom the "outraged public" about any of that now.

Don't tell me the coalition couldn't have succeeded. The big boy Liberals didn't want it to succeed. End of story.

Think of Mulroney's air scandal, Harper's income trust fund reneging, the Liberals turnabout on NAFTA, blah blah blah blah blah. Nary a whimperfrom the "outraged public" about any of that now.

I think I know what you mean. But at the time, the vast majority of Canadian voters voted against Brian Baloney for renegging on his solemn promise not to open up free trade talks with Washington.

And then in 1993 elections, Chretien's Liberals made themselves out to be the only anti-FTA, anti-GST, anti-Mulroney party with a chance of defeating the conservatives. The result was NAFTA in 1994, the stupidest trade deal in the history of the world, and a flip-flop on GST.

Federal Liberals were rewarded again in 1997 with the phoniest majority ever. Needless to say, Canadian voter turnout dropped off after the free trade betrayals and major policy flip-flops. In a comparison of over 160 nations wrt voter turnout in the decade of the 90's, Canada ranked way down the list between Fiji and the republic of Benin.

And the strange thing about it is, Canada has one of the most well educated and informed publics in the world. But even though Canadians voted against the free trade giveaways to corporate America, our dysfunctional electoral system ensured that our two paternalistic old line parties in government were able to override the wishes of the large majority of Canadian voters. First past the post, first past the ghost electoral systems are at the root cause of voter frustration in the last few countries where politically conservative agendas are the rule.

The Liberals have not forgotten the torment of abstaining to prop up Harper. I see no evidence that they want to start that again.

And no one has shown us how the Liberals can proceed otherwise than by either replacing Harper with the coalition a.s.a.p, or dying the slow death of abstentionism.

Ignatieff is sensibly lying low so as to relaunch the opposition after the House resumes. I expect he will find the budget lacks credibility -- "Canadians cannot trust Harper to do what he promises" -- and so on. Because he has no other realistic choice, that I can see.

For the time being, the dominant features of mainstream political life will be the stalling of Conservative efforts to secure a majority in Ottawa and the building of a right-wing consensus between Conservatives and Liberals on a response to the economic crisis. If nothing else, such a configuration quite clearly undermines the fanciful and misguided idea of a “centre-Left” alliance between the NDP, the Liberals, the BQ and the Greens advocated in some left-wing circles (with the activist and radical Left presumably playing the role of fast-fading rump).

there are many on both sides who would like to see a return to a
2-party system, which our parliament was designed for. With 2 parties,
a majority generally means a majority, rural gerrymandering
notwithstanding.

A 2-party system still marginalizes many voices. I think proportional representation has the potential to be far more democratic.

"The NDP has accompanied and exacerbated the drift towards the centre and right with a purely electoralist strategy aimed at occupying ground in the centre of the political spectrum freed up by the crisis of the Liberal Party. In this latest campaign, this meant strongly asserting the NDP “brand” through the promotion of Jack Layton as a candidate for prime minister, while simultaneously waging an extremely timid campaign on the issues. While certainly welcome, promises to roll back Conservative corporate tax cuts, withdraw Canadian troops from the US-led war in Afghanistan and kick-start a countrywide childcare program were the most radical features of an NDP campaign that remained silent on the key pillars of neoliberalism – corporate power, privatization, financial deregulation, free trade, precarious work and the radical transfer of income from labour to capital. All these questions took a backseat to appeals to the media-defined political “centre”. We were even treated to the absurd spectacle of the NDP leader — in the midst of a historic meltdown of financial markets and credible predictions of the worst economic downturn in generations — refusing to countenance the very idea of running a government deficit, just as neoliberal governments themselves here and abroad prepared to do just that.

Where has this person been since 1995? Rao concedes a little of what's happened in that general period but starts off by mentioning the Liberals swinging to the neoliberal right in 1995, which is true. He doesnt mention anything about a neoliberal bank heist of the century with changes to the Bank of Canada Act in 1991 and rammed through parliament by Mulroney's conservatives without any debate. That was the year our phony majority leader of the day effectively privatized money creation in Canada. And the Liberals fell in line with the infamous federal budget sabotaging the federal social transfer in 1995. Maybe the devil made them do it.

The NDP has strongly opposed every single rightwing neoliberal deal that's been made in Ottawa, including FTA and NAFTA. Perhaps Rao has a a selective memory? He paints a picture of the NDP falling in line with the neoliberal agenda though and says they didnt talk about deficit spending during the campaign, but they did. Layton mentioned that the Harpers were moving the country toward budget deficits with their laissez-faire attitude on the economy.

In fact, political Conservatives in both the US and Canada are prolific deficit spenders. Republican conservatives have set galactic records for spending Americans into bottomless national debt holes. Both Canada's Tories and Liberals were responsible for digging Canada into a federal debt hole after racking up $590 billion in debt by the 1990's. But Rao seems to want us to believe that the NDP have now fallen in line with neoliberal ideology themselves. Rao is spinning the truth, and in fact it's our two oldest political parties that are now trying to distance themselves from the second-hand economic voodoo due to the obvious collapse of neoliberal deregulation in banking and finance around the world. That's what they call a no-brainer. Rao doesnt mention that neither the Tories nor the Liberals have mentioned that they arent mentioning anything about the need for further neoliberal deregulation to help North America out of this deregulation mess. In fact, it goes without mention. Rao seems impervious to the fact that neither of our old line parties actually do what they pledge to do during election campaigns. Does anyone need a list here to refresh their memories? In fact, our two neoliberal political parties have perfected what's known as the neoliberal flip-floporama of colossal proportions, and no pun on proportional elections advocated by the NDP intended. Our two old line parties have been the biggest liars since, well, Pinocchio.

Someone should tell Rao that Liberals and Tories are the real "Keynesians" According to a government report, Liberal and Tory governments at either level of government typically can't balance a budget far more often than provincial NDP governments which tend to be more fiscally responsible. It's the NDP who are "fiscal conservatives" and the two old line parties the stimulus-loving Keynesians. That might throw this spin doctor for a reverse loop.